Alphabetique

26 Characteristic Fictions

Take the sumptuousness of Molly Peacock's own #1 bestselling The Paper Garden , the extraordinary creative variety of The Bedside Book of Birds , and the cat-nip-for-language-geeks appeal of Eats, Shoots and Leaves , and wrap it around tales rich with wisdom and humanity, and you get Alphabetique : the most gorgeous gift book of the season. nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Molly Peacock has written a new classic, a book of magical tales inspired by the lives of the letters of the alphabet. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Alphabetique , or Tales from the Lives of the Letters is one-of-a-kind, but nevertheless fits perfectly with Molly Peacock's extraordinary body of work, drawing on the same wellsprings of creativity and artistry as her poetry and her nonfiction, especially The Paper Garden . These 26 charming, incisive, sensual stories of love, yearning, and self-discovery are complimented by Kara Kosaka's layered, jewel-bright collages.

Opinion

From Library Staff

A beautiful collection of short stories, each focused on one letter of the alphabet. Each letter is anthropomorphized and each story offers a snippet of their lives. Spanning all elements of life from childhood to old age, the stories are brief but beautiful, often packing an emotional punch. Pea... Read More »

From the critics

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A beautiful collection of short stories, each focused on one letter of the alphabet. Each letter is anthropomorphized and each story offers a snippet of their lives. Spanning all elements of life from childhood to old age, the stories are brief but beautiful, often packing an emotional punch. Peacock displays an obvious love of the language as she works to include as many words starting with the starring letter into each story. As with any collection of short stories, I had some favourites but none of the stories left me feeling dissatisfied. The book is also gorgeously illustrated by the collage style artwork of Kara Kosaka who adds an additional level of whimsy to the volume. Recommended for those who like short stories or anyone searching for a reading palate cleanser.

ksoles
Dec 20, 2014

Poet Molly Peacock gained renown for her ability to mix the literary with the visual when she published "The Paper Garden" (2010), a memoir of a woman who made impossibly intricate collages of plants and flowers. Now comes a second book that reads like an adult version of an ABC primer. "Alphabetique" creatively gives each letter of the English alphabet a "life story," a moral tale on a social situation. Though the concept sounds oblique, Peacock's tales prove charming, thought-provoking and linguistically brilliant.

The letter “d,” a deer, grows up to be upper-case D who “always felt, somehow or other, double...He always saw both sides to everything.” He becomes a metaphor for gender uncertainty whereas "L," a has-been movie star with three ex-husbands, shows that the process of ageing deserves accommodation, not contempt. Each chapter opens with a flurry of alliteration, enhancing the reader's enjoyment: “A flute would flare – then fifteen-year-old F would flounce onstage, positively fetching in her French-fashioned gown.”